First Templar Nation

by Freddy Silva

  Whether Prior Arnaldo became a member of the Ordre de Sion by being at the right place at the right time or whether he sailed with Count Dom Henrique with the intent to join the monks from Orval who constituted said brotherhood, we shall never know for sure, but the thread stitching all these people and events together is thick enough as to be beyond mere coincidence.

  Such a position imbued Arnaldo with immense political leverage. The abbey established close ties with the nearby Church of the Holy Sepulcher right from the time both fraternities were installed by Godefroi de Bouillon. It therefore afforded its prior direct access to two people in particular—Hugues de Payns and Godefroi de Saint-Omer, the nucleus of the Order of the Temple. That relationship was revealed on July 19, 1116, when a document signed by both Prior Arnaldus and Hugues de Payns declares “good relations are assured between the two Orders.”8

  In the relationship between the Order of the Temple, the House of Burgundy, the Ordre de Sion, and the incipient Portuguese kingdom, Arnaldo da Rocha would prove to be the lynchpin. He was Portuguese by birth. His friendship with Count Dom Henrique granted him favor within the Portuguese court and, through his family’s status, connections with the nobles and ecclesiasts in and around the city of Braga and the royal seat in Guimarães, many of whom were of Burgundian heritage.

  But Portuguese chroniclers going back at least five centuries give Prior Arnaldo even more credit. They cite him as a key founder of the Knights Templar in Portugal, as well as one of the original Templars in Jerusalem: “Arnaldo da Rocha, who was a Templar knight, was one of the first nine originators of this illustrious Order of the Temple in Jerusalem,”9 wrote the historian Alexandre Ferreira in 1735, quoting an earlier seventeenth-century source, Manuel de Faria e Sousa.10 And Sousa would have been in an excellent position to state the facts, for not only did he study original documents in Braga—which places him in the perfect geographical location for source material—he was himself a Templar knight.*8

  Arnaldo da Rocha as one of the original Templars is both provocative and explosive, at the very least historically, because it brings into sharp focus an unsettling proposition: Were there really only nine original Templar knights? Or was this number merely a symbol, a talisman, the kind of flourish employed by secret societies throughout that period?

  We may never know the truth for certain; however, an esteemed chronicler of the seventeenth century, the monk Bernardo de Brito, categorically stated in the Cistercian chronicles of Portugal that the original Templars consisted of “Hugues and Godefroi and nine other knights”11 (emphasis added). This raises the original core group of proto-Templars to eleven.12

  Did Brito misinterpret?

  What would his motive have been?

  To what end?

  The point is worth considering. And so is this: throughout the ancient Mysteries schools, the number nine has represented the gnostic concept of utmost perfection. It is personified by the gestation period of the egg inside the female womb, a Holy Trinity to the power of three. In relation to our quest, there exists an arcane system of knowledge encoded within the Tarot, and although for most people the Tarot is nothing more than a set of decorative playing cards, in reality it is modeled on Kaballah, an ancient system of knowledge whose ideology is enshrined within most pagan and esoteric societies from remote times to the Middle Ages, and into the eighteenth century through speculative Freemasonry and its 33 degrees of initiation.

  To the point, the ninth card in the deck of the Tarot is The Hermit. And as we have already seen, it was a hermit named Peter who, with a group of monks addressing themselves as the Ordre de Sion, traveled to Orval, home of Godefroi de Bouillon, the protector of the Holy Sepulcher, who subsequently installed this fraternity in the abbey he rebuilt atop Mount Sion.

  The Hermit card.

  And by 1116 the head of this organization is a Portuguese prior and friend of Hugues de Payns, the emerging Grand Master of a group of knights soon to be known as the Knights Templar.

  12

  1117. BETHLEHEM. AT A CEREMONY . . .

  It has always been a mystery why Baudoin I also “owed his throne” to the Ordre stationed in the Abbey de Notre Dame du Mont de Sion, unless the same people who installed his late brother on the throne reconvened soon after the knight’s untimely death to appoint another member of the Merovingian bloodline, thereby assuring its continuity. Part of the answer materialized in 1117 when Baudoin I negotiated one of history’s most important events: the constitution of the Order of the Temple, which effectively legitimized a breakaway group of knights stationed in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The ceremony was performed at the site of Saint Leonard of Acre in Bethlehem, a fief belonging to the Ordre de Sion.

  Baudoin is said to have undertaken this ceremony under “obligation,” suggesting he owed the Ordre de Sion a big favor. In any event, the monarch’s actions were timely seeing as his health was deteriorating by the day.1 A few months later, following a march in Egypt, Baudoin fell ill once again when “he went walking along the river which the Greeks call the Nile and the Hebrews the Gihon, near the city, enjoying himself with some of his friends. Some of the knights very skillfully used their lances to spear the fish found there and carried them to their camp near the city and ate them. Then the king felt within himself the renewed pangs of an old wound and was most seriously weakened.”2 Baudoin contracted food poisoning and was carried back to Jerusalem on a litter but died along the way. “The Franks wept, the Syrians, and even the Saracens who saw it grieved also,” wrote the chronicler Fulcher de Chartres, who described him as another Joshua, “the right arm of his people, the terror and adversary of his enemies.”3

  And so on Easter Sunday 1118, yet another king of Jerusalem was chosen, Baudoin de Bourcq, cousin of Godefroi de Bouillon. Like his former family members, he too had served on the First Crusade.

  Barely had Baudoin II gotten used to his newly appointed seat when he received a visit from Hugues de Payns and Godefroi de Saint-Omer, as though the two intrepid knights were presenting their credentials. They may have received a less enthusiastic reception than from his predecessor: Baudoin II was in desperate need of warrior knights above spiritual warriors. The king’s position may have created an ethical dilemma for Hugues, as the contemporary account by Michael the Syrian describes how “Baudoin advised this Hou de Payn to serve in the militia as a fighter instead of taking holy orders.”4

  Hugues was a well-traveled man; he had been tested for the better part of a decade in the Near East and was familiar with the works of influential moral writers such as Guigo, prior of La Grande Chartreuse, who would warn him of the dangers of mixing military and monastic life, and no doubt the pious Hugues paid attention to such sound spiritual advice:

  It is indeed pointless for us to attack exterior enemies if we do not first conquer those inside ourselves. If we are unable first to subject our own bodies to our wills, then it is extremely shameful and unworthy to wish to place under our control any sort of military force. Who could tolerate our desire to extend our domination broad over vast tracts of land abroad while we put up with the most ignominious servitude to vices in those minute lumps of earth that are our bodies? Let us therefore first of all conquer ourselves so that we may then go forth in safety to combat external foes; let us purge our souls of vices before we rid the lands of barbarians.5

  Death of Baudoin I.

  And so it fell on Hugues de Payns, together with Godefroi de Saint-Omer, to repitch to the new king the importance of the mission of this “brotherhood within a brotherhood” living among the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher. Perhaps they argued the case convincingly because there is no account of this core group of knights ever having battled alongside Baudoin II.

  The king mulled over Hugues’s proposal. He possessed several properties in Jerusalem, one being his residence, the al-Aqsa Mosque, at the southern end of the platform of Temple Mount, the site previously occupied by Solomon’s Temple. Only recently had the mosque and its adjace
nt buildings been converted to suit his needs. The location even held for him a certain sentimental value: a banquet had been offered there following his coronation, and a thousand years before him, it had been the place where Jesus himself had been offered. What favor, then, did these obscure knights carry that led Baudoin II to agree to vacate the holiest of sites in Jerusalem, the very rock on which Mohammed had “climbed to heaven,” the site where Solomon’s Temple once had stood?6

  And that is not all. In addition to the Temple of Solomon, “The lord king together with his nobles, granted temporarily or in perpetuity certain benefices from their own holdings to cater for their food and clothing.”7 Certainly Hugues de Payns and his group were powerful. They already had the authority to appoint their own priests, a right exclusive only to the pope, and these priests not only formed the nucleus of the Order, they also were directly descended from the offices of the canons of the Holy Sepulcher.8

  Whatever Hugues de Payns pitched to Baudoin, it sold him. Hugues and Godefroi de Saint-Omer humbly accepted the offer to move to Temple Mount, and as a gesture of gratitude they built for the king “a splendid manor next to the Temple so that the King could reclaim his own to stay in if he wanted.”9 And so the brotherhood of knights gained independence from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. From this moment, thirty knights, including a nucleus of nine, possibly eleven men, took up residence and became forever known as the Knights Templar.

  Baudoin II receives Hugues de Payns and Godefroi de Saint-Omer.

  The specific premises granted them was Solomon’s stables, a space so cavernous even the German Crusader and eyewitness Jean de Würtzburg remarked, “One sees a stable of such marvelous capacity and extent that it could house more than two thousand horses or fifteen hundred camels.”10 Why did Hugues de Payns and Godefroi de Saint-Omer request a residence so grossly disproportionate to the number of knights? And why should Baudoin have unquestionably submitted to their request?

  The common point of contact between the Templars and Baudoin was the Ordre de Sion: What influence did it exert on this event? We can only speculate. However, it is worth reminding ourselves of the accepted story of the origin of the Knights Templar, how they wished to serve the Christian ideal by protecting pilgrims traveling the perilous, bandit laden road from sea to shrine. The fact that this was to be accomplished by nine knights is logical proof that the legend is both preposterous and unenforceable and was thus provided as a smoke screen masking an ulterior and undisclosed motive. Besides, right from the very start, the protection of pilgrims had been entrusted to the Knights Hospitaller, who were far better equipped for the task.

  During the years that followed, the Templars resided on Temple Mount and hardly left the premises, much less took an interest in safeguarding pilgrims. They were said not to have had the material resources to maintain the upkeep of their own premises, and in time the building looked as dilapidated as their clothing.11 It is as though they adopted a monastic lifestyle or spent their time purposefully studying or planning something of such importance that demanded complete concentration. Just like that of the Ordre de Sion on the neighboring hill, the Templar’s work was carried out with pathological secrecy. Archaeological accounts confirm the knights dug tunnels beneath Temple Mount, and they left behind several items that can be positively identified as Templar artifacts.12 This has led to speculation that their real task “was to carry out research in the area in order to obtain certain relics and manuscripts which contain the essence of the secret traditions of Judaism and ancient Egypt.”13

  Baudoin I’s most famous last act as king established 1118 as the founding date of the Knights Templar, at least as a coherent entity. And yet rumors persist that the concept of the Knights Templar had been around much earlier. The hypothesis is supported by a number of sources: Ernoul, a squire of the Templar knight Balian d’Ibelin, claimed the date to be earlier than 1118, as did Simon, a monk of Saint Bertin of Sith, who placed the event at 1099;14 the eighteenth-century historian André Mende even traces the origin of the Knights Templar to 1096.15 All of the above may in fact be correct in their own right if we stand back and look at the facts presented so far.

  The seed of the idea to create an elite group of spiritual knights may have been planted in 1096 at Orval, born of discussions between Peter the Hermit, the monks from Calabria, and Godefroi de Bouillon. Upon the declaration of the first Crusade to free the city of God, this idea was given forward motion, and following the successful reconquest of Jerusalem, the plan took material form when Godefroi rebuilt the Abbey de Notre Dame du Mont de Sion and installed the monks, along with a brotherhood of twelve knights. At the same time, he installed an additional group of knights in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, within which was planted a spiritual brotherhood led by Hugues de Payns. Like looping a circuit, this group subsequently established good relations with the Ordre de Sion.

  A number of key associates and supporters of the Order of the Temple all converged in Jerusalem around this formative period, and not necessarily to take part in the reconquest of the city. For instance, the executive owner of the land at Orval and one of the Templars’ original supporters, Comte Hugh de Champagne, visited the Holy Land with a group of knights, friends, and vassals as early as 1104, staying for four years before returning home.16 Clearly something impressed him because he returned in 1114. Shortly before his second departure he received a letter from the bishop of Chartres, who wrote, “We have heard that . . . before leaving Jerusalem you made a vow to join the Militia of Christ, that you will enrol in this evangelical soldiery.”17

  If Hugh de Champagne made a vow before his return home in 1108, either there must have been a coherent group of knights already established by Hugues de Payns or the comte made contact with these knights (most of whom originated from his own duchy and those adjacent), who intended to form one by the time of his second voyage.

  It is his first trip that is of interest. Comte Hugh de Champagne and Hugues de Payns were no strangers to each other; Hugues was the comte’s cousin and vassal,18 and on at least two occasions in 1100 both men were cosignatories in property transactions in the duchy of Champagne, the domicile of Hugues de Payns.19 Besides, Hugh de Champagne would have been privy to Hugues de Payns’s intentions in the Holy Land, least of all because they spent a month together aboard a ship bound for Jerusalem. Once he set foot there, Hugues de Payns, like so many of his countrymen, made his pilgrimage to the place over which so much blood had been spilled, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. He met with its resident knights and monks and soon after took up residence in the church’s compound.

  His arrival in this compact city could not have been better timed, because another Burgundian knight had recently arrived from an equally arduous sea voyage, the Count of Portugale. Dom Henrique and Hugues de Payns would have had ample time to get acquainted—two years, in fact—and this circle of friendship would inevitably have included the man traveling with the count, Prior Arnaldo da Rocha.

  And so in 1104, the principal figures in the story linking the Knights Templar, the Ordre de Sion, and the county of Portugale appear together in the same location.

  By 1106 Dom Henrique returns to Portugale—with or without Arnaldo we do not know—but Hugues de Payns remains behind in Jerusalem for the next six years.20 During that time he is joined by the other cofounder of the Knights Templar, Godefroi de Saint-Omer. This knight not only originated from the same duchy as the first patriarch of Jerusalem, he was also identified as one of the entourage that originally accompanied Godefroi de Bouillon, the so-called domus Godefridi, meaning that at least one cofounder of the Knights Templar was part of the patriarch’s inner circle. And if this tightly knit group of advisers included members of the Ordre de Sion—which by all accounts it did—it may explain why documents cryptically refer to the Ordre de Sion having been instrumental in the creation of the Templar Order.21

  Needless to say, the proto-Templars existed in one form or another at least eighteen years b
efore Baudoin I gave them a king’s blessing at the ceremony at Saint Leonard of Acre.

  And in this sequence of events we can also appreciate how it was possible for the Order of the Temple to have been present in Portugale far earlier than previously known.

  After establishing himself on Temple Mount, Hugues de Payns remained in close contact with the canons at the Holy Sepulcher.22 As he did with the monks of the Ordre de Sion: nine years after his signature appeared on the document alongside that of Prior Petrus Arnaldus,23 a second document was made on May 2, 1125 (the Celtic feast of Beltane), again bearing both men’s signatures, once more declaring “good relations are established between the two Orders.”24

  A continuous collaboration between the Templar Grand Master and the Portuguese prior of the Ordre de Sion? To what end?

  One thing is certain. If a relationship existed between Prior Arnaldus and Hugues de Payns, so by implication it existed between the Ordre de Sion, the Knights Templar, and the nascent Portuguese nation-state.

  13

  1117. GUIMARÃES. IN THE COURT OF COUNTESS TAREJA . . .

  With her son and heir to the throne of Portugale a mere eight years of age, the thirty-two-year-old widow Tareja found herself with the responsibility of governance, yet the years she would endure as a mere countess were brief. After her military victory defending her southernmost city of Coimbra against the Moors in 1117, she began addressing herself as queen—an unrealistic expectation given how she was an illegitimate daughter and her late husband had been a mere count. Nevertheless, her delusions of grandeur were assisted by a papal decree recognizing her as such, Rome being more than delighted to award her a token title for having dispatched many Arab infidels back to Allah.